Leaping Off a Cliff
by weebee
Summary: GTFW has obviously had Sam bite off more than he can chew when it sends him into the place of Ranma Saotome during the battle with Saffron. Now, not knowing where the doctor is, the Project staff must take a huge risk in order to find him. Throwing Ranma


Leaping Off a Cliff.

Disclaimer: I do not own Ranma 1/2 or Quantum Leap. I don't own much, actually, so please do not sue me. It'd probably all go to your lawyers, anyhow.

Summary: GTFW has obviously had Sam bite off more than he can chew when it sends him into the place of Ranma Saotome during the battle with Saffron. Now, not knowing where the doctor is, the Project staff must take a huge risk in order to find him. Throwing Ranma around in time can't possibly end well...

I know, another fic... Not gunna say sorry, I'm writing what I can, when I can these days. Anyhow, hope you like it.

Prologue, The Blue Light.

September 15, 1995.

The first thing Dr. Sam Beckett noticed as the light of his quantum leap transit dissipated, was the feeling of vicious winds whipping around his body, flapping the silk of his shirt against his skin. As the final afterimages of the light faded from his blinking eyes, the second thing he noticed was that he was several hundred feet in the air, and spinning very rapidly in the middle of a tornado. In front of him, spinning at a similar rate of speed, was a winged, glowing man.

"Oh boy." He muttered, as the man threw a tremendous ball of orange, flaming energy at him. The scientist frantically tried to throw his body to the left, but being unfamiliar with mid-air movement, and thinking, like any other sensible individual, that it was actually impossible, it didn't work.

Within seconds, the ball engulfed him, and he flew out of the wind vortex, his limp form falling quickly to the ground below.

HR. – August 21, 1999.

"Where am I?" Ranma Saotome muttered, as his eyes snapped open. The last thing he'd remembered, he'd…. wait, what had he been doing? Something told him it had been important, but his mind was foggy for some reason. Looking around the room he'd found himself in didn't help, either. It was merely an expanse of bright blue wall, apparently completely round, with a white band of light near the ceiling.

Sitting up and sliding off of the bed he'd been laying on, he surveyed the place again but came up with nothing. Still, the feeling in the back of his head was tugging, saying that there was something SERIOUSLY wrong, and that he had to get back to... Something… before it was too late.

"I wonder where everyone else is?" He mused, frowning. His dark mood only lasted for a second, though, as he thought of something. "Maybe I got kidnapped instead of Akane this ti…" That's when he remembered. He'd been fighting Saffron, in order to save Akane. Was she safe? What had happened to Saffron and the battle? He was pretty sure that if he had lost, he wouldn't be alive to tell about it. Was this what it was like when you died? "Hey, anyone out there?" He yelled, seeing nothing else to do as he turned slowly around.

HR.

Al Calavicci yawned expansively as he stepped into the main control room at Project Quantum Leap. It was about 2:30 in the morning, but he'd been sleeping in the small group of guest quarters in the complex since Ziggy had said that Sam would likely leap soon. While, to the leaper, the time between leaps was relatively short, to the people at PQL it had been over five days since he'd leapt out of the last 'visitor,' Marilyn Monroe's shofer. Al Smiled for a moment, remembering how much fun he'd had during that particular leap, before regaining his serious expression and looking around.

Gooshie was busily tapping buttons at Ziggy's interface table, while Tina hovered over his shoulder. "What's goin on?" The rather sleep deprived admiral demanded, slowly.

"We've confirmed that Dr. Beckett's leapt, but we can't lock on him." Gooshie explained, hurriedly.

"That's not unusual." Al commented. "We've lost him for a few minutes before." He tried to convey the attitude that there was nothing to worry about, even though what Gooshie had just told him did worry him quite a bit, as the little programmer looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel.

"You don't understand!" The brown haired man said, ringing his hands and then returning them to the keyboard. "Dr. Becket's always left some form of residual trace, but this time he's just gone!"

Al paled. "Get the doc down to the waiting room and start up the imaging chamber. Let's try looking for him." He snapped, striding towards the heavily reinforced door to the room that let him project himself into Sam's head.

Gooshie went back to typing, as Tina ran off to the nearest telephone to call the project's psychologist to talk to the visitor.

HR.

Ranma growled, frustrated. He couldn't find anything of interest in this room, and his clothes had been replaced with a hospital gown. The place didn't even seem to have a door, as he'd walked around, tracing the wall for cracks, for the better part of five minutes. "If anyone's out there, this AIN'T funny!" He yelled, at the top of his lungs as he glared up at the large white set of lights at the top of the room. He was considering blasting a wall with a Moko-Takabisha and seeing what happened, when a section of wall seemed to slide up into the roof with a loud 'Whump' sound.

The martial artist turned around quickly, taking up a defensive stance as a black woman in a casual yellow sweater and brown pants walked in, holding a clipboard. Seeing his stance, she held up her free hand. "Calm down, I'm not here to hurt you." She said, in slightly accented English.

He'd always been able to understand English, but not nearly as well as he was now. "That's good." He said, slowly, but still in his stance. "Where the hell am I?"

"You're just in a holding area. We need to keep you here for a while." She said, comfortingly. "I promise, we'll let you go soon."

"Where's Akane? Is she all right?" Ranma asked.

"Akane. Is she a friend of yours?" The woman asked, walking the rest of the way into the room and setting her clipboard down

"She's…" Ranma stopped for a moment, but shook it off. "She's my fiancée." He admitted.

To his surprise, she reached to her belt and withdrew a small device. "Ziggy, we're looking for a Japanese male. Engaged or married to a woman by the name of Akane."

"What?" Ranma asked, even more confused than before now, and starting to get irritated.

"My name is Dr. Beeks. I need to ask you a few questions, and then I can tell you more." Ranma sighed at this, but this Beeks person hadn't done anything to make him suspicious other than being too curious, so he nodded.

"All right, what do ya need ta know." He asked, sinking to the side of the bed. "But you'd better tell me what's goin' on after."

Verbina beeks sighed in relief as the person who wore Dr. Beckett's face finally released his obvious martial arts stance. Personally, she couldn't blame him for his suspicion, though she was glad that it hadn't been worse. There had been a few visitors who she couldn't even approach, and some who hadn't stopped crying or screaming for the whole time they were here. Luckily, she could keep her promise. She'd explained almost all of PQL's functions to a lot of the visitors, and when they'd leapt back they hadn't remembered a bit of it. "I'm going to need to know your name, age, and date of birth." She started.

HR.

"What do you mean he doesn't exist?" Al demanded, looking up at the blue sphere of light that was Ziggy's main interface and brain.

"I mean exactly what I said, admiral." The computer said, in it's smooth female voice, though if you listened closely enough you may have been able to hear a small amount of exasperation. "There is no "Ranma Saotome" in existence, and never has been. Nor is there an Akane Tendo, Genma Saotome or Nodoka Saotome."

"Al grimaced. "Is he lying to us?" was his first thought.

"Dr. Beeks seems to think he's being honest." Donna Beckett, Sam's Wife and the administrative head of the project, commented from the other side of the control table. She'd just arrived a few minutes ago, and her mussed up hair and wrinkled business suit showed it.

Al shook his head. "Well, I'm inclined to doubt it if Ziggy can't find anything on them in our records or Japan's." He grumbled, before heading from the room.

"Where are you going?" Tina asked, surprised.

"To talk to this Nozzle." Al shot over his shoulder, before turning a corner and disappearing into the maze-like corridors of the building.

HR.

"Look, I told you everything you want to know, now when're ya gunna start explaining?" Ranma asked, looking at the black woman across from him in exasperation.

"Can we go over what you were doing when you blacked out again? Verbina asked, slowly. "You say you were fighting against… a Phoenix?" She cocked her head to the side. She knew not to let her disbelief show through, especially since the boy seemed to believe what he was saying. Unfortunately, she was inclined to believe that he was under some pretty heavy delusions.

"Yeah, his name was Saffron." Ranma replied, for the second time in the last hour. That was when the room's door opened again, and an older man, wearing a rather loud orange shirt and white slacks and chewing on the end of an unlit cigarette marched in.

"Doc, let me talk to this guy." He said, simply.

Dr. Beeks sighed, and got up. "Just a second, Mr. Saotome." She said, walking to the door with the loud shirted guy.

Ranma turned his head slightly, straining to hear as the two talked.

He couldn't hear Dr. Beeks very well, as she seemed to be keeping her voice down, but the man was audible enough. "Listen, doc. Sam's lost, and this guy's the only one who can tell us where and when he is. I don't care what has to be done, but I want honest answers and I want them now!" He stopped for a moment, listening to Dr. Beeks, before throwing his arms up into the air. "Great, so now he's insane? This is all we need." He said, waving his cigarette around.

Ranma's face took on a distinctly annoyed look at this comment, and he walked up to the two. "What, so ya think I'm nuts?" He asked.

"Well, some of what you've told me is a little bit out of the ordinary, but I wouldn't say you were insane, no." Beeks said, quickly.

"Funny, I thought that's what 'delusional' meant." The cigarette smoking man replied, quickly.

Ranma glared at the irritating guy in the loud clothes. "Who's this guy, anyhow?" He asked.

"Admiral Calavicci." Dr. Beeks replied, then frowned at the man. "One of the co-founders of this project, and not a psychologist."

Admiral Calavicci just shrugged. "Still doesn't stop me from thinking that a guy who thinks he's fought a phoenix is a little loopy." He snorted.

Ranma reluctantly nodded. He had to admit that a lot of what he'd said sounded nuts. Looking around, he saw that there was no water around. This both annoyed him, since the curse was usually the easiest way to convince people that there was really weird stuff going on, and relieved him since he didn't like showing it to others. Concentrating, he went to the next best thing, focusing and manifesting his battle aura.

Strangely, it seemed a lot harder than usual, and he felt an electric tingle across his body. "What's goin on?" The admiral asked, backing away as Ranma glowed with blue energy. Part of it was the crackling electrical power that he recognized from the many times he'd seen Sam leap. The rest, however, was some sort of soft glow that enveloped the short Japanese boy.

"Wha…" Dr. Beeks said, as she watched the form of Dr. Sam Beckett, who almost all of PQL saw when they looked at visitors, melt away to reveal a younger person, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, with longer black hair.

Ranma smirked, as he saw the reaction he'd been expecting, and withdrew his Aura. He frowned, however, when the other energy that had enveloped him stayed, flying up his arms and legs and towards his body. Within seconds, it had enveloped his head, though he couldn't feel anything wrong.

"That…" Calavicci said, stunned.

Beeks numbly nodded.

HR.

"Okay, so lemme get this straight." Ranma said, as Dr. Beeks and Admiral Calavicci sat across from him at a table that had been brought into the waiting room. "You've got this guy named Sam, and he jumps through time and changes history so really bad stuff doesn't happen?" He asked. As Calavicci nodded, Ranma snorted. "And you were callin' me insane for sayin' I fought a phoenix?"

Dr. Beeks couldn't help but smile, but Al scowled. "Look, Mr. Saotome, we need all the information you can give us so we can find Sam." He explained, dead serious. "If you're lying to us about any of the information you've given us, we need to know the truth."

Ranma shook his head. "Sorry, but it's all accurate." He said. "I can't remember the exact date, we were walkin' through China for a couple days and I didn't check a calendar before I left, but everythin' else's the truth. I was in the middle of fightin' Saffron when…." Suddenly, his face went pale.

"Is there something wrong, Mr. Saotome?" Dr. Beeks asked, leaning forward.

"… you said that guy gets transported into the same position I was?" Ranma asked. At the confirming nod, his head fell. "Damn." He muttered. "Look, I…" He stammered, his throat clenching as all of the pieces connected in his brain. ""He's probably dead."

"What do you mean, he's dead?" Calavicci demanded, shooting up from his seat and leaning over the table, his hands pressed firmly against it.

"I was in mid-air, defendin' against giant fire balls and heading back to earth pretty fast when I blacked out." Ranma explained. "Unless he's as good a martial artist as I am or better, he couldn'ta made the landing, and even if he did Saffron'd probably roast him."

"You sound so sure of that." The admiral said.

Ranma glared back at him. "Since it means Akane's probably dead too, I ain't lying about this."

"Akane?" Al asked, shooting a glance over at Beeks.

"His fiancée." She replied, quietly.

Al merely growled, turned and left the room. The doctor was about to begin explaining that the military officer was under a lot of stress, when she noticed that Dr. Beckett's face was filled with grief.

"She's probably dead," Ranma muttered, flatly, the voice sounding rather hollow. Standing, Verbina left the room, deciding to leave him alone for the moment.

HR.

"All right, recalibrate for the next week and try again." Al ordered, as he stood in the Imaging Chamber, his well trained eyes scanning the blurred scenes that flashed past for any sign of Sam. He'd been at this for over eight hours, but it was the only option, as the Visitor was apparently still telling that stupid story about a Phoenix, and the medical staff had come back with some story about super-human strength and reflexes.

The whole group was a bunch of nut-jobs, in his opinion. Sam was alive, and he was going to find him. "Admiral Calavicci, we've reached the end of the search pattern." Gooshie's voice rang in the chamber, and the air force man scowled.

"Well, let's start it again," He ordered.

"Sir, we've run this search seven times now," the programmer objected. "Also, Ziggy has come up with a possible reason for the non-existance of our guest."

"Other than his lying through his teeth, you mean." Al snorted. "All right, I'll come out and listen to her crackpot theory, but I'm resuming the search as soon as possible."

Stepping out of the Chamber, he was surprised to see that the entire staff were still around, gathered around Ziggy's main control table. He'd stopped hearing any voices other than Gooshie and Ziggy four hours ago, and had thought that the others had left.

He kicked himself as soon as he thought that, seeing Donna, who looked like she'd been crying, standing next to Tina, whose gum chewing looked like it should probably hurt given the intensity with which she was doing it. "So what's this theory of Ziggy's?" He asked, much more quietly than he had intended originally. Right now, scorn wasn't what was needed in this situation.

The computer's large blue main body pulsed, almost as if clearing its throat, before responding. "I may know why we can't find Dr. Beckett or any record of Mr. Saotome," she replied. The main screen which was built into the central table abruptly showed a diagram of a string, running through several loops on some form of fabric. "You all know of Dr. Beckett's string theory, which is the backbone of Project Quantum Leap."

Al rolled his eyes. He knew, but he also knew that Ziggy loved to talk, and that interrupting the coming reiteration would probably take longer than listening to it. "The idea is that each person's life can be thought of as a temporal string. If you somehow tied the ends together," Abruptly, the diagram on the table began to move, the string tearing free of one of its bindings, and looping over to touch its beginning, "you form a loop. If you then roll the string up over itself, you can reach any point on its length."

"Ziggy, we all understand that, what does this have to do with what's going on now?" Donna asked, and Al winced. Though the woman had helped Sam design the supercomputer's Artificial Intelligence, the older man sometimes wondered if she knew anything about the tin plated windbag.

"I was getting to that," The computer said in a very irritated, put-upon fashion. "What this theory doesn't take into account is that the 'string' that represents Dr. Beckett's life is held in place by something. Something which requires this facility's main nuclear reactor at full capacity to overcome." As she spoke, the string on the diagram uncurled, and one end turned, plunging through the tear in the fabric that had been created when it had first been pulled off.

"Wait, you're not saying..." Gooshie said, his eyes widening.

"Yes. When we first sent Sam Beckett into the past, the force we used to dislodge his quantum string created a hole in space-time. I believe that his last leap was to that exact date, and he... passed through the hole."

"So we can't find him because he's nowhere on our leg of the torn pants of time or something?" Al asked, confused.

"Essentially, yes." Ziggy agreed. "It would also explain several anomalies in Mr. Saotome's abilities and physiology if he came from a different timeline."

Al was smiling, but Dr. Beeks wasn't. "Does that mean that what he said about Dr. Beckett's probable fate was true as well?" She asked, worriedly.

"Right now, we shouldn't think about that," Donna replied. "How can we begin looking for him past this… hole?"

"Unfortunately, all of my knowledge of the world comes from the national networks I am connected to and my temporally shielded main database," Ziggy contributed. "Other than theoretical speculation, I have no way of knowing if the 'hole' even exists."

"Then why not send another leaper through it?" Tina suggested, and everyone turned to her, surprised. "Well, we've refined things to the point we can probably aim someone at the same period when Dr. Beckett went missing, and if we know where they're going, we might be able to track them." She suggested, popping her gum.

"Sometimes I forget you're actually pretty smart," Al smiled widely, and started out of the room.

"Where do you think you're going, admiral?" Donna asked, stopping the military man in his tracks.

"To prepare to leap," he responded evenly.

"That wouldn't be advisable," Ziggy piped up. "Admiral Calavicci's brainwave connection to Dr. Beckett is our surest way of tracking him. Though it would make him more likely to find him, it would also mean that if we lost the Admiral as well, both would be absolutely impossible to find."

Al growled. "Then who?" He asked, irritably. "Tina and Gooshie are needed to run the equipment."

"I…" Donna started, before being cut off by Al again.

"Are you kidding? After we use enough resources to perform a second full body acceleration?" He snorted. "The government Nozzles'll be breathing down our necks so fast we'll need you to keep them from shutting us down outright."

Donna nodded. "Then what do we do?" She asked, worriedly.

"I think I've got an idea," Gooshie said, smiling, and Al winced at the sight of his horrible teeth.

HR.

"This is insane, he's still in shock from the probable loss of his loved one, and I'm not sure if he's even sane," Ranma's head rose as he heard the sound of two people arguing while coming up the hall to the hospital room where he lay.

"He's also the only other person around with a connection to Sam that we can track," The irritating voice of Admiral Calavicci returned. "You heard Ziggy, she said that someone with a connection to Sam would have a better chance of finding him, and I can't find much larger a connection than aura overlap and brainwave contamination."

"And you're so sure he's going to agree?" Beeks shot back, hotly.

"You'd be surprised what someone will agree to under the right circumstances," Al returned, and Ranma's eyes widened, as the door abruptly swung open, revealing that the two had been talking outside. Seeing his expression, Al looked between the psychologist and their guest, shrugging. "I guess we were too loud."

"What is it you want me to agree to?" Ranma asked, nervously.

"We want to send you in the same device we used to send Sam to other times," the Admiral replied. "We think that you could be able to track him down, probably right at the beginning of his leap into your life."

"Right at the beginning? So…" Ranma said, trailing off as he realized the implications. He'd spent the last few hours trying to think of what had happened to this random time traveler who had apparently taken his place, and had always returned to the fact that he was probably dead, along with the small doll he carried within the folds of his shirt. Ranma wasn't sure about time travel, but he knew that the beginning of the leap would be when he'd blacked out, when He and Akane were riding the tornado, and he had been preparing his final, desperate attack against Saffron.

He had a chance.

"I'll do it." He said, and Al gave a satisfied smirk to the psychologist, who frowned worriedly.

HR.

"All right, Mr. Saotome, just relax." Gooshie said, as Ranma stood in the middle of a large, blue and white cylinder, wearing a skin-tight white jumpsuit.

"I am relaxed," The martial artist growled, causing Al to smirk.

"Think we should tell him we see his heart rate and blood pressure?" The admiral was shushed by Donna's upraised hand.

"All right, begin charging for Quantum Acceleration," she ordered.

"Charging," Tina replied.

"Setting in coordinates and locking on retrieval program," Gooshie continued.

Ranma did his best to stop himself from twitching, wanting to look around as a set of rings began swinging around, increasing in speed rapidly, and blue lightning began to crackle.

"Power is at threshold levels," Tina reported.

"Coordinate lock holding steady," Gooshie said as a console in front of him beeped.

"Leap," Donna ordered, worriedly, as what looked like her husband began to glow, the blue electricity surrounding him crackling, as the physical aura fell away and she glimpsed the boy who was really there. Within seconds, he'd vanished, and seconds more re-appeared, falling backwards onto the chamber floor. "Did it work?" She asked, nervously.

"Oh, it worked." Al said, whistling. "Damn, she's cute!"

Donna just ignored the nonsensical comment, a rather common occurrence given that Al could see the visitors' true forms, and watched as several people ran up to the fallen body.

"We have a fix on Mr. Saotome," Ziggy's voice piped up from the center of the room. "Admiral Calavicci?"

"Right, I'm going," Al said, heading for the Imaging Chamber.

HR.

She woke up with her head feeling as though it had been through a meat processing plant, and stared up into the darkness. Sitting slowly in spite of the pain, she tried to blink her eyes into adjusting to the low light, and succeeded just enough to notice that she was sitting on a western style bed, which was in the middle of a bedroom. She was half way through swinging her feet off of the bed when a white door seemed to appear in the middle of nowhere, and a man in a green striped shirt and a pair of black pants walked out of it.

"Wow, two cute girls in five minutes, Calavicci, you're lucky," The man said, smiling.

"Admiral?" The girl asked, blinking at the older man. "So, the leap worked?"

"The leap…" Al shook his head. "Who're you?"

"It's Ranma," She said. "Did I get anywhere near that guy you wanted me to rescue?"

"Look, I've seen Ranma, and you ain't him," Al shook his head, before looking up into the imaging chamber's ceiling. "Ziggy, do you have the perception filters set the way they used to be again?" Obviously getting a response from the computer he didn't like, he replied "Then explain to me why I'm looking at a cute little red headed chick who says she's Ranma right now? Yes, I know the visitor's not a redhead… just…"

"Oh, yeah, I am a girl," Ranma said, looking down at herself and noting the somewhat thinner, more delicate hands and the obvious breasts on her chest. This only mildly irritated her, rather than surprising her, though she couldn't remember for the life of her why changing genders would be so normal. "How'd that happen?"

Al looked between the somewhat confused leaper who was still sitting on the bed and his hand link. "Oh boy," he muttered, rubbing his forehead.

END.

Notes. A couple of explanations.

First, the less important. Nozzle is Al's go-to insult. I get the feeling that it is used so that they don't get in trouble for using profanity, but in any case, know that when Al calls someone a Nozzle, it's not a compliment.

Why doesn't Ranma remember the curse? In QL, whenever Sam leaps his memories get scrambled. It's not erasure, since sometimes he remembers things and sometimes he doesn't, but it can take a pretty big chunk, and during his first leap he couldn't remember who Al was, what PQL was, or even his name. This only seems to happen to people who come through the accelerator, as visitors are usually able to clue the staff in enough to help Sam out with little difficulty.

Also, disclaimer: Any quantum string theories in this fanfic, are not intended to bear any resemblance to any real world Quantum String Theories, living or dead.

Thank you, and tell me how you like the fic.


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